Parents want more time with their kids – job survey data shows

deseret.com

SALT LAKE CITY — Data recently released by conservative Utah think-tank Sutherland Institute shows a post-pandemic trend of parents wanting more quality time to raise their kids, according to Nic Dunn, Vice-president of Strategy and Communication who was a guest on KVNU’s For the People program on Monday.

“The big take-away for anyone advancing a pro family-friendly policy agenda should be this, that parents in Utah and across the nation, they want to re-prioritize parental caregiving as how they want to create the arrangement for their kids. That also means that there are things that work can do to be more supportive of that. And it really just opens up a wider variety of interventions to make it easier for working parents to balance their work life and their home life,” Dunn explained.

The data showed that 81 percent of parents in Utah surveyed preferred having one parent or guardian act as a primary caregiver, raising the kids at home. Thirty-seven percent of two-parent households have both parents working full-time, but only 17 percent said they would like it to stay that way.

“When we see these overwhelming numbers that 81 % of Utah parents that say ‘no we’d like one of the parents to be the caregiver’ as opposed to a relative or a child care provider or even a nanny,” Dunn added. “That difference where the number of households working fulltime for both parents versus the ones who say they would like to, there’s a serious gap between what working parents in Utah are doing today to arrange their work and family life and what they think is their ideal.”

Dunn said he thinks that is the big take-away to inform policy discussions around family-friendly policy and in a workplace policy relating to families is, rather than asking the question ‘How do we get more child care’ or ‘how do we help parents to get into the workforce’, shift the question to ‘How do we help more Utah families achieve the ideal vision for their work and family life in a way that works best for families and kids?’

Dunn’s op-ed story can be found in the Deseret News.

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